Brno’s Tugendhat House Gem
Architectural residential design: Light and the Modern Home
The twenty year life of the Czechoslovak Republic from its birth in 1918 until its death at Nazi hands in 1938 saw a revolution in architecture, much of it residential.
The end of the first World War broke up the Hapsburg Empire and, thanks to Woodrow Wilson, resulted in the creation of Czechoslovakia from the former Austro-Hungarian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. Already prosperous, independence unleashed a wave of industrial and intellectual energy that made it a leader among European states within two decades.
Textiles were a major industry and the new wealth allowed new, young, families to build their homes in the new style. In the late teens and twenties the country’s leading architects, many trained under Vienna’s Otto Wagner, were seeking new forms and they developed a Cubist form utilizing simple geometric forms, noteworthy for lack of adornment. More austere, perhaps than even the Art Deco developing in the United States.
In 1928 Fritz and Greta Tugendhat, both from wealthy textile families, engaged Maria Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, a famed German architect, to design a new home for them. The site was a difficult one, the steep hillside of a part of her family garden in Brno.
The house that Mies Van Der Rohe delivered for them in 1930 has come to be considered a classic of the international style. Using a steel frame and poured concrete, interior and exterior walls were not load bearing. Interior walls became part of the décor of the building and interior space was open, closed only by drapery hung from ceiling mounted tracks..
From street level the house is single story and angular. A large flat roof joins two separate sections. The section to the right former servants quarters, to the left a long white glass wall curves back in a half circle to the entrance of the family quarters.
Strangely, this is the third floor and the family sleeping area. The sleeping rooms are not large and are rather stark except for one wall of mahogany floor to ceiling doors in each room that contain clothing storage.
Light from the glass wall suffuses the hall and stair to the living space on the second floor. The reception area opens through the writing/library space and looks into the glass walls of the plant filled solarium. The wall that separates the living room space from the writing room/library section is a good example of wall as decoration. Here a floor to ceiling tan golden onyx wall four inches thick forms the backdrop separating the two spaces. Translucent, it can glow in different tones with differing light.
And the light comes from an entire floor to ceiling wall of windows that run along the garden side of the house, overlooking not only the hillside garden but the city of Brno as well. In yet another innovation, Van Der Rohe designed this feature so that at the touch of a button the two panels opening to the living room and to the dining room can be completely lowered bringing the outdoors inside.
Throughout the house the use of rare woods on walls, such as the rounded walls of the dining room, provide a visual perspective, defining space by color, texture and light. And that, perhaps, is the secret to the beauty of this place. Extremely expensive when built, it was among the first to have central heating and central air conditioning, and don’t forget those wondrous disappearing window walls.
The Tugendhat’s only got to spend eight years in their dream house. As Hitler pushed his demands in 1938 the family escaped to Venezuela through Switzerland. Abused by the Nazis and during the Communist regime, it is a museum and is about to be restored after issues with the Tugendhat heirs are resolved.
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